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practices, are affecting banks, businesses, and consumers. Any looming changes in the business climate
such as this need to be included in your marketing plan.
The Strategy
The next section of the plan details the strategy your organization will use to develop, market, and sell the
offering. This section is your opportunity to create a compelling argument as to what you intend to do and
why others should invest in the strategy. Your reader will be asking, “Why should we adopt this strategy?”
To answer that question, you may need to include a brief discussion of the strategic alternatives that were
considered and discarded. When readers complete the section, they should conclude that the strategy you
proposed is the best one available.
The Offering
Provide detail on the features and benefits of the offering, including pricing options, in this section. For
example, in some instances, your organization might plan for several variations of the offering, each with
different pricing options. The different options should be discussed in detail, along with the market
segments expected to respond to each option. Some marketing professionals like to specify the sales goals
for each option in this section, along with the associated costs and gross profit margins for each. Other
planners prefer to wait until the budget section of the plan to provide that information.
The plan for the offering should also include the plan for introducing offerings that will follow the initial
launch. For example, when should Progresso introduce new soup flavors? Should there be seasonal
flavors? Should there be smaller sizes and larger sizes, and should they be introduced all at the same time
or in stages?
Part of an offering is the service support consumers need to extract the offering’s full value. The support
might include presales support as well as postsales support. For example, Teradata has a team of finance
specialists who can help customers document the return on investment they would get from purchasing
and implementing a Teradata data warehouse. This presales support helps potential buyers make a